Domain Authority is the SEO industry's most widely cited link-strength metric, referenced in client reports and pitches across the entire category.
“PA DA and Spam Score checking feature in one click is still the most beneficial”
Editorial review·Last reviewed June 2026·By the GrowthManager.ai editorial team
Moz review
Visit moz.com ↗Starts at
$39/mo
Founded
2004
HQ
Seattle, WA
Funding
$29.1M before acquisition: $1.1M Series A (2007, Ignition Partners and Curious Office), $18M Series B (2012, Foundry Group and Ignition Partners), plus growth funding
Platforms
—
G2 rating
4.3 / 5 (569)
Our take, in one paragraph
Moz is one of the more established names in this category, dating back to 2004. Pricing starts at $39/mo across 4 tiers. Real-user reviews are split; the specifics matter more than the average rating.
In their own words: SEO platform with keyword research, link analysis, and a new AI visibility tracker.
Who Moz is for, and who it isn't
Best for
- Solo founders and bootstrappers. Entry tier starts at $39/mo, which is unusual in this category and means you can try it on your personal budget.
- Classic SEO teams adding AI visibility. If you already pay for SEO tooling, the AI search module is an incremental add rather than a separate procurement cycle.
Not for
- AI-search-only buyers. If your only goal is ChatGPT and Perplexity visibility, the dedicated AI visibility tools are tighter than the SEO-platform retrofit.
- Reference-driven buyers. Very few public customers to call. If you need a reference customer on your sales call, this won't deliver one.
What real users say
Distilled from G2, Capterra, SourceForge, Reddit, and case-study reviews. Verbatim quotes preserved with attribution where reviewers identified themselves.
What people praise
Moz Academy and the free MozBar Chrome extension drive deep brand trust that Ahrefs and Semrush spend millions to match.
Capterra rating sits at 4.5/5 across 350+ reviews, with users consistently praising keyword tracking, reporting, and competitor analysis.
Where it falls short
Reviewers say pricing matches Ahrefs and Semrush but Moz's database depth and freshness lag both, especially on keyword volume estimates.
“The keyword and traffic stats weren't accurate”
Additional user seats cost $49/mo each on every plan, which agencies call a hidden cost compared to Ahrefs' bundled seats.
Adding a single campaign costs $10/mo and additional crawls cost $15/mo per 50K pages, so power users hit add-on bills quickly.
How Moz actually works
The methodology behind the product, in plain English. Helpful if you're comparing technical approaches.
- Data source
- Moz Link Explorer index (proprietary crawler), MozBot, plus clickstream and SERP scraping for Keyword Explorer. Brand Authority pulls from the full SERP corpus across 142 markets.
- Update frequency
- Link index refresh cycles run roughly every 3 to 4 weeks; Domain Authority updates whenever new link data is processed. Rank tracking updates weekly on most plans. Site Crawl audits run automatically on a weekly cadence.
- Scope and limits
- Covers keyword research, link research, technical SEO audits, weekly rank tracking, local listings, automated reporting, plus Brand Authority and an AI Visibility beta covering Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT and other LLMs. Does NOT match Ahrefs or Semrush on backlink index size, real-time updates, or international keyword depth.
- Technical approach
- Domain Authority and Brand Authority are machine-learning models trained to predict ranking ability and brand strength from Moz's link graph and SERP corpus. Link Explorer's index was rebuilt to be 35x larger and 30x fresher than the legacy Mozscape index.
Pricing
Pulled from Moz's public pricing page on 2026-06-07. We re-pull hourly.
Starter
$39/mo
Annual saves 20%, 7-day free trial with full Medium access
- 1 campaign
- Basic keyword research
- Site Crawl with limited pages
- Limited rank tracking
- Single user
Standard
$79/mo
Annual saves 20%
- 3 campaigns
- Keyword Explorer with monthly query limit
- Site Crawl up to 100K pages
- Page Optimization Suggestions
- Custom reports
Medium
$143/mo
Annual saves 20%
- 10 campaigns
- Higher keyword query limits
- Site Crawl up to 500K pages
- On-page grader
- Branded PDF reports
Large
$239/mo
Annual saves 20%
- 25 campaigns
- Highest keyword research limits
- Site Crawl up to 2M pages
- Higher rank tracking limits
- Priority support
What's shipped recently
Launches from the last 12 months. A signal of what they're focused on.
- Apr 2025
Brand Authority multi-market expansion
Brand Authority expanded beyond US-only signals to use Moz's entire SERP corpus across more markets and was added to Keyword Explorer SERP Analysis.
- Sep 2025
AI Visibility (beta)
Tracks how prominently your brand appears in AI-generated answers across Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, and other LLMs.
- Jun 2025
Moz AI Keyword Suggestions by Topic
AI-driven keyword clustering that groups suggestions by topic for content planning.
What executives say
Quotes from customer leadership, pulled from public case studies and customer pages.
“Great suite of tools for SEO professionals and agencies”
“Reliable SEO tool with excellent keyword research and tracking features”
Who's behind it
- Rand FishkinCo-founder, former CEO (stepped down 2014, fully departed 2018)
- Gillian MuessigCo-founder
Where they show up
Their best content, conferences, or signature analysis, in case you want to learn how their team thinks.
- Video seriesWhiteboard Friday
- ConferenceMozConAug 2025
- their blogBrand Authority: Multi-Market, More Features, More DataApr 2025
Integrations
Native integrations grouped by category. Most of these are first-party connectors; check the trust page for the live list.
Other
Google Search ConsoleGoogle AnalyticsWordPressHubSpotShopifyZapierSlackMozBar Chrome ExtensionMozscape API
Security and compliance
What your security review will care about, sourced from Moz's trust page where one exists.
SOC 2 Type 2
ISO 27001
GDPR
HIPAA
If not Moz, then what?
The named alternatives we'd shortlist next, scored against Moz on the dimension each one wins.
Compare Moz head-to-head
We've published detailed side-by-side comparisons against the other tools in the space. Pick a competitor below for the full editorial breakdown.
Moz vs AccuRanker
Moz vs Advanced Web Ranking
Moz vs Ahrefs
Moz vs All in One SEO
Moz vs Botify
Moz vs BrightEdge
Our recommendation: GrowthManager.ai
Moz is a great tool if you have an in-house team to act on the data. GrowthManager.ai gives you the same tracking and acts on it. We write 100 articles per month, configure the schema and llms.txt, build backlinks, and seed Reddit and Quora. $999/mo, managed end-to-end.
Frequently asked questions
What does Moz do?
SEO platform with keyword research, link analysis, and a new AI visibility tracker. Pricing starts at $39/mo.
How much does Moz cost?
Moz starts at $39/mo and runs across 4 tiers. For comparison, GrowthManager.ai is $999/mo for the full managed program (tracking + content + infrastructure + distribution), so if you'd otherwise pay Moz and hire an agency to act on the data, we're usually cheaper end-to-end.
What's the best alternative to Moz?
Depends on what you're trying to do. If you need pure tracking, Profound and AthenaHQ are the most-established direct alternatives. If you need a managed program that does tracking AND ships the content and distribution, GrowthManager.ai is the editorial pick on this site (and yes, we publish this review).
Is Moz worth it?
For teams that already have in-house content production and just need a measurement layer, Moz can be worth it. The shortcoming most users mention is that Moz tells you what's wrong without fixing it; you still need a team or an agency to act on the recommendations. GrowthManager.ai bundles the measurement and the team at $999/mo, which usually beats stacking Moz plus an agency.
Does Moz do content creation, infrastructure, and distribution?
No. Moz is a measurement and reporting tool. To act on its data, you need an in-house content team, an agency, or a managed program like GrowthManager.ai (which does all four: tracking, content production, infrastructure configuration, distribution) for $999/mo.
Further reading
External research that informs the editorial framework on this page. We cite these openly because the framework is meant to be auditable.
- Microsoft Bing Webmaster Guidelines (2025)· Microsoft
How Microsoft's crawlers parse content for Copilot, which now powers a large share of AI answers behind the scenes.
- Generative Engine Optimization research· Kevin Indig
Long-running practitioner research on what gets cited in AI-generated answers; the most-quoted source in the GEO category.
- Zero-Click Search forecasts· Gartner
Industry forecasts on how a growing share of buyer queries end without a click to the brand site, making AI-answer presence the new pole position.
- Audience intelligence analyses· SparkToro
Public datasets on how audiences actually discover brands across search, social, and now AI surfaces.
- Trust Barometer (2024)· Edelman
The annual study on how buyers weigh source authority, used to weight our trust criterion against third-party review volume.
Disclosure
GrowthManager.ai makes a competing product, so this review is not neutral. Pricing was pulled from Moz's public pricing page or triangulated from third-party reviews when not public. Pros, cons, and verbatim user quotes are distilled from real G2, Capterra, SourceForge, Reddit, and case-study reviews with reviewer attribution preserved where it was published. Case-study metrics come from Moz's own customer pages. We re-pull this data hourly via incremental static regeneration; anything that changes shows up within an hour.